Julie Bishop: The Liberal Party 'rockstar' overlooked for leadership

She was “a rock star’’, according to the prime minister and Julie Bishop is already being touted as a contender for Australia’s next Governor-General.

Strolling the green carpet of the House of Representatives in $1500 Christian Louboutin red heels, jogging through Beijing or mixing with Hollywood stars, she even graced the front cover of Women’s Weekly this month.

So why did Australia’s first female foreign minister manage a measly 11 votes in the Liberal Party ballot for the leadership?

Despite being hugely popular with voters, Julie Bishop crashed out in the first round of the leadership ballot. (AAP)

Bishop has spoken in the past of the “loneliness” of being the only female minister in federal cabinet.

“It was pretty lonely. I would be sitting in a cabinet with 19 men and me.”

While she once insisted she would never play the gender card, she conceded there was an “unconscious bias, almost a deafness”.

It was Julie Bishop who informed Tony Abbott he no longer had the support of the Liberal Party. (AAP Image)

But the response of Credlin, who was once Tony Abbott’s chief of staff, was withering.

"Julie Bishop often cites the words attributed to former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright: 'There's a special place in hell for women who don't support women’," Ms Credlin writes in The Forgotten People: Updated, Liberal Essays on Modern Australia.

"In the six years I worked as chief of staff to our party's federal leader, I have never known a woman to advocate for another woman; never, not once.

"As women, sometimes we are our worst enemy."

Julie Bishop insists she urged Tony Abbott to appoint more women.

"I urged then Prime Minister Abbott to appoint more women to his first cabinet but he did not appoint any," she said.